If the author is mentioning Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahnik, chances are they're getting the high fashion *wrong*. They're generally writing about their fantasy of what life is like if you have the money to wear high fashion clothes... and while it might be a nice fantasy, it's usually nothing like reality. The reality isn't very "nice" tho and doesn't fit the conventions of chick-lit, so they're sort of stuck.
A lot of chick-lit is like that tho. A historical romance can't talk of the reality that most people didn't bathe in the Middle Ages. When they talk about what people eat at Court, they get it wrong. When they discuss clothes, they'll have the heroine wearing the wrong kind of underwear, or bitching about a pinching corset in Regency England. Ooops. Not all chick-lit authors make egregious errors, but it is not at all uncommon.
So a lot of the unlikeable *there* is that the author doesn't understand that her chosen genre's conventions are in direct conflict with reality. So rather than dealing with that conflict knowingly, she ignores it. Ignoring the biggest conflict in the book means that she is reduced to just addressing the conflict that she dreamed up... and often that is *also* affected by the fact that genre conventions and reality don't match up. You end up with a much weaker book when the author doesn't address the disconnect between reality and genre conventions, just like an SF novel where the author has characters travelling between solar systems is weakened if the author makes it clear they don't understand that relativity might affect the plot.
The fact that the heroine is too stupid to live is a side effect.
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Date: 2005-08-16 05:00 pm (UTC)A lot of chick-lit is like that tho. A historical romance can't talk of the reality that most people didn't bathe in the Middle Ages. When they talk about what people eat at Court, they get it wrong. When they discuss clothes, they'll have the heroine wearing the wrong kind of underwear, or bitching about a pinching corset in Regency England. Ooops. Not all chick-lit authors make egregious errors, but it is not at all uncommon.
So a lot of the unlikeable *there* is that the author doesn't understand that her chosen genre's conventions are in direct conflict with reality. So rather than dealing with that conflict knowingly, she ignores it. Ignoring the biggest conflict in the book means that she is reduced to just addressing the conflict that she dreamed up... and often that is *also* affected by the fact that genre conventions and reality don't match up. You end up with a much weaker book when the author doesn't address the disconnect between reality and genre conventions, just like an SF novel where the author has characters travelling between solar systems is weakened if the author makes it clear they don't understand that relativity might affect the plot.
The fact that the heroine is too stupid to live is a side effect.